August 25, 2008

set your time--or else!

if you have servers/workstations in Thailand you probably should know that as of aug-23rd every business computer in the kingdom has to set it's time to the new TST (Thai Standard Time) or get fined a wheelbarrow full of money (from 100,000 to 500,000 baht, that's about $2500 to $15,000 US, yikes). i can understand the idea of using a timeserver to keep stuff in synch (really, who doesn't?) but man, that's a whopping big fine for being "time dumb" (especially if that's a per computer fine!). this article claims one of the reasons for doing this is so that everybody hears the national anthem at the same time.

the Royal Thai Navy's Hydrographic department is in charge of providing a national time server & it looks like they got windows covered at least (yes they devoted more than 1/2 of that page to windows 95/windows ME, no Mac, no Linux--not sure what stats they're running off).

in any case, if you're in Thailand, point your time server at:

time.navy.mi.th

and bob's your uncle. i like the idea of having a "local" time server so we swapped tout de suite. works plenty fine. the navy, as usual, did a bang up job.

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posted by Paul Hastings @ 8:54 PM 0 comments

August 07, 2008

the end is nigh

my hair and fingernails starting following out. their's a gray pall over the whole landscape. the summer sun feels weak, like mid-winter. birds are dropping out of the sky. even the bugs stopped buzzing.

brett favre's a new york jet?

oh my.

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posted by Paul Hastings @ 2:43 PM 0 comments

July 15, 2008

say it ain't so dr. horrible!

got up at the crack of dawn today to get on my bike and get my intervals out of the way early (nothing like starting the day with some physical agony, the rest of the day can only get better ;-) so i could watch the first episode of Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. to my surprise (especially since the blog was discussing the episode's timezones for europe and down under) this turned up instead:



ouch. but hey ok, there was a "download from iTunes" link. so hey ho, off to the iTunes store i go. a buck ninety-nine? a bargain. click the buy button, "content not available in thai store". geez louise. ouch again.

suffice to say i'm fairly disappointed, i was expecting something a bit more global from these fine folks.

ps: none of the links in that flash filler work.

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posted by Paul Hastings @ 7:06 PM 2 comments

July 11, 2008

be like me!

if you're a fan of Joss Whedon's work (like say buffey or firefly) you may want to know about Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. which of course has a blog.

note the release dates:
  • 1st episode july 15th
  • 2nd episode july 17th
  • 3rd episode july 19th

the free airings will get pulled midnight july 20th.

they've got a comic over on mySpace.



everything is, of course, done up in flash.

so remember, if you have a friend that excels in math and science, report them!

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posted by Paul Hastings @ 4:12 PM 0 comments

July 24, 2007

Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave

the wonderfully named "moronland" site has a page for the 13 worst translation mistakes. most of these should be familiar if you follow tex texin's (the unicode bulldog) Marketing Translation Mistakes.

the "moronland" page is kind of unique in that it coins the term Babelfished, as in I wonder if these companies just Babelfished the slogans into another language.

another set of examples why you should use human beings for translation ;-)

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posted by Paul Hastings @ 3:39 PM 0 comments